Anyone else feel that given the current game, there's no reason to mix and match character classes and ships?

One of the only distinctive benefits from choosing a class is being able to train your BOffs with Level 3 versions of certain skills. Unfortunately, current Tier 5 ships of a specific class only offer level 3 BOff slots for that class.

For example, tier 5 escort vessels only has one Level 3 Tactical BOff slot (Lt. Commander or higher). All other bridge officer slots are level 1 or 2. As a Science type character, there are no benefits from taking the tier 5 escort vessels, since all the skills you can train require a Level 3 or higher Science officer slots.

This flies quite against the spirit of Cryptic'ss statement on their own "Player Progression" page:

Quote:

Space skills are generally broader than ground skills. They’re designed to augment your Bridge Officers’ abilities, as well as your own. Therefore, even if you’re a Tactical officer, you can take Engineering skills, which will help your Engineering Bridge Officers become more effective. This has a lot of influence on the way your ships behave. If you’re a Tactical officer flying an Escort ship, which usually doesn’t offer much in the way of Engineering bridge stations, having a lot of skill points invested in Engineering could significantly improve your Engineer’s performance, even though the ship has limited capabilities in that area.

That statement implies that ground combat is supposed to follow the more rigid tank/healer/dps model, but space combat was supposed to allow characters of every class find ways of fulfilling any role. As is, a player is clearly gimping themselves for choosing to take anything other than a tactical officer for an escort. Or science officer for science vessel... Or engineer for cruiser.

The fix is obvious and fairly simple: All Lieutenant slots should be increased to Lieutenant Commander slots for tier 5 ships.